


draw it out of me

by multicorn



Series: we are shaped like stars [6]
Category: American Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drawing, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 00:39:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6262603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/multicorn/pseuds/multicorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He surges on to certain destruction, against all fear and all reason, almost as if (his commanders say) he were seeking it out. Perhaps he is. And Alex's lips, swollen from the thoughtless onslaught of his own teeth, are shades darker than usual in the shadowed room, red as carmine, red as blood. Of course John lunges -</p>
            </blockquote>





	draw it out of me

John had loved to draw since he could remember. Crouching on the warm clay soil in his parents' garden, he learned to sketch the waving fronds of the sassafras as their shadows shifted over him, the tiny brown wrens until their wings flicked upwards in goodbye. There was a peculiar joy in the focus required, in losing himself and his tumbling thoughts in the details of an object observed. He studied technique, in fits and starts, throughout his childhood, until after a short course in Geneva at sixteen he conceded that he lacked the gift to ever be more than an amateur. He left behind, too, the charms of physic, and committed himself to the study of law in hopes of satisfying his dearly beloved father. At nineteen, he dedicated all of his energies to studying under the soaring wooden arches of the Middle Temple Inn of Court. Only when the Revolution finally broke out in America, was the same object able again to claim his devotion as well as the lion's share of his hours. And by the time he was confirmed as General Washington's newest aide-de-camp, shoulder still aching from the wound of a British musket ball, it had been years since he'd done any sketching, or even had the pencils to do so.

And then there's his fellow aide. Hamilton. Alex. Something in the way he moves, jittery but deliberate, like he can't decide whether he's a predator or prey, the way he looks like he's striking a pose every time he finally holds still, makes John's fingers itch for a pencil to describe him properly. An energy that flares out about him that John can't put into words - which is fair enough, since words are Alex's special domain - but that John might just be able to put into a drawing. He finds himself staring, tracing Alex's features with his eyes as if with a pencil or brush. His friend is like art come to life that calls out to become art once more. But most of all there's the impulse that has always sent John scrambling the quickest for his pencils, the need to capture some record of a creature interesting and fleeting, freed from the accidents of nature that surround it, to keep safe some record for memory.

He really, really wants to sketch Alex. He hasn't the skill to do it first in ink -

Walking through the camp back to headquarters, alone in the thick gray air, he spots the ruins of an abandoned, probably unauthorized, campfire. He pokes through the little pile of rubble - no longer warm, but still smelling of smoke - until he finds a piece of charcoal that fits nicely in his hand. It's rough, the pitted surface scraping the uncalloused under-sides of his fingers, but for once he doesn't mind the discomfort. He thinks it'll do the job.

Late at night, as most every night, lately, he and Alex sit up in the aides' workroom after the others have gone to sleep. The room is more than large enough for a dozen men, low-ceilinged but wide, the walls covered with rough white plaster that looks yellow by the firelight, and the wooden beams on the ceiling fading into the black shadows of invisibility. Alex works harder by working longer hours than anyone else, whereas John - he admits only to himself - would have been asleep already, too, if he hadn't preferred to stay up later simply to be near Alex. There's nothing he has left to do tonight. Even writing another letter to his father would simply be repetitive; the British still occupy Philadelphia, the General still frustrates him endlessly saying they don't have enough men to challenge them, and there's nothing new to add on this score to the last few letters he's written. And there's a piece of charcoal, a light weight against his thigh, waiting patiently in his pocket.

Anyone else, John couldn't sketch now without running the risk of being noticed. He could do it, instead - he'd half-planned to - propped up on one arm in bed, under his scratchy wool blanket, looking across to Alex's head peeking out from under his own gray blanket and both of their blue coats, on the cot opposite. But when Alex is writing he doesn't look up, not even for the sound of bullets whistling by, much less for the sound of charcoal scraping like dry bones, only barely different from the expected scratch of ink bleeding from a pen.

John starts with the dark fall of Alex's hair, almost as black as the charcoal. There's a warmth in its undertones that could be captured by paints, if only he had a set, or the skill, which he lacks. He roughs in the shadows first, the bags under Alex's eyes and hollows of his cheeks, the distinct triangle shape cast by his nose. Then he backtracks to mid-toned areas - Alex's mouth, the one part in motion, as he keeps chewing at his lip, the downcast diagonal rectangles of his brows. He's moved on to the details of the spiral on the inside of Alex's ear when Alex finally pushes his last paper back. He stretches his arms over his head with a loud sigh and a sound of creaking joints.

John's silently panics. He hadn't planned what to do if Alex finished before he did, which was, admittedly, in retrospect, foolish, as in fact his plans frequently are. Hastily he crosses his arms over the paper in front of him, but Alex has already noticed. It's too late.

"What are you doing?" Alex asks. His brow is furrowed in puzzlement. John lifts his arms in surrender and presses himself further back in his chair the better to let Alex see. Looking down at the paper, away from Alex, he sees that he's smudged it in a few spots in his attempt to hide it.

"What do you think?" The question's automatic, though he's not sure that he wants to know. He hopes too much that Alex likes it, and he's too afraid that he won't. His dearest friend can be savagely critical, tearing his opponents in writing to bloody shreds; he's never yet turned the sharper edges of his wit on John, but then again, he's never had the cause. Now, John sees, looking down at the paper as if from a great distance, he's put as much of himself into this sketch as he has of Alex.

"It's a sufficient likeness," Alex says, after a few moments of study. "But my chin isn't as sharp as you've drawn it, nor are my eyes quite so large." He trails off, for a second, still looking, his lips forming into a moue, and why can't John stop staring at them. "Why, Laurens, you've made me pretty!"

John feels his cheeks heat up, and wishes his skin were a couple shades darker so Alex couldn't see. "I was just practicing," he mutters. Besides, it may be true, but he hadn't realized it until Alex pointed it out.

"I may not be well informed on the subject of art," Alex says, "but you seem to have a fair measure of skill.  I am most curious, however, as to the reason for your choice of subject."

John could just say "you were convenient," which has the advantage of being true. But with Alex, in all the world, he feels like he doesn't have to lie. Alex always wears his heart on his sleeve - and John does, too, usually - but in the cases where he tries to silence it, to seem a more praiseworthy gentleman or a more satisfactory son - Alex pesters him, and says, _tell me!_

_No, not everyone, don't be foolish. Simply confide in me._

So he says, "I wanted a picture of you."

"Why? To wear over your heart?" Alex teases. John swallows. There's probably more than one pretty girl who Alex has flirted with, who already wears just such a picture.

"No - " he says, though, maybe, that too. "To remember you by." And then he snaps his mouth shut, too late.

Alex advances on him, and if there had been something feminine about his manner earlier, distilled and brought to light by John's picture, he's undeniably masculine now. John finds it even more attractive, and he reminds himself to breathe. And stay back. Not to fly into the flame -

"What makes you think I'll die before you do?" Alex asks. John's blood pounds in his ears. Alex must know, everyone knows, that John's marked to die first. That he's marked that out as his purpose -

Alex is compelling, but frightening, too; the flame of the candle he'd left on the desk is easier to look into than his eyes. "I didn't mean that," John objects. "It's not only for if you're gone - but if we're separated. None of us can predict what the fortunes of war will bring."

"And, truly, you would miss me so much?" The uneven curve of Alex's smile is close to, but isn't quite, mocking. The dip and rise of his voice is almost the same as but not simply amused. What they are, John realizes, with a shock, is coquettish. He'd never have thought to put that word to his friend, but it fits. He's an exemplar of manly firmness in his arguments, in the face of the wearying marches and hunger that they share… and, it seems, he's something else too. As if a light has been cast into the shadows, revealing in them a whole new world of details that John doesn't know how to read.

"Don't tease me," John says, fiercely. Hungrily. As if struck dazed by the sudden light. He wants so much - he wants Alex so much - that he doesn't know how to explain. Both his strongest and his weakest point has always been that he's no good at holding back. He surges on to certain destruction, against all fear and all reason, almost as if (his commanders say) he were seeking it out. Perhaps he is. And Alex's lips, swollen from the thoughtless onslaught of his own teeth, are shades darker than usual in the shadowed room, red as carmine, red as blood. Of course John lunges -

Alex meets him as soon as he's moved. He hadn't expected that. Alex's lips are surprisingly yielding under his for a second, then they part, and his tongue is inside the wet of Alex's mouth, the conqueror invited inside the walls. Or so it seems; but Alex, of course, though frequently open, scandalously so, can never be passive for long. He closes his lips, pressing them against John's again, and sucks on his exploring tongue, till John feels that Alex might suck out his soul with this gentleness, and he'd be all the happier for it. And more than that: Alex's arms come around him, a part of his weight on John's shoulders, and his own arms, without consulting him, cross themselves behind Alex's back. Holding him closer, as they bend together, as they kiss and kiss and kiss. Alex smells like candle-smoke and ink; he tastes of iron, he must have bitten the inside of his own mouth, and John can't believe that just a minute ago he didn't know these things. He feels like he's drowning in euphoria. He feels like he can breathe, properly, for the first time in his life. He doesn't think he can stop.

Alex pulls back - leans back, in his arms, the shift of his weight thrilling John - and looks at him intently. If John had felt exposed from the picture, he feels pinned now, like a butterfly, wings vainly fluttering their last. Like any sort of animal that won't stay still enough to draw till it's dead.

"So this is what you wanted," Alex says. John can't tell how much of the triumph in his eyes is for what they've just done, and how much is for solving the puzzle that he hadn't realized that he must have been presenting. No matter. He nods, breathless. It hadn't been what he was looking for, but he can't deny, now that it's happened, it's what he always has wanted.

"Laurens?" Alex says.  Eyes wide and demanding, some sort of word, apparently.

"Yes," John says.

"We'll have to be careful," Alex says. Somehow, he says this, between small, biting kisses, as he starts to make his way down John's neck. John laughs, feeling hysterical with it. Careful doesn't fit either of them well.

"You think this is careful?" he says, and immediately realizes he shouldn't have. Alex pulls back to mock-glare at him, and already he misses his touch. The room without him is colder now than it was five minutes ago.

"You started it, my dear," Alex says. John tries to glare at him too, but he can't do anything other than beam. And they stand, bare inches between them, the barrier breached but not gone. They're still breathing each others' breath, John feels the warmth of Alex's exhales on his lips, and he crumples his fingers tightly into fists. He has known that he needed to practice restraint.

Then Alex grins, and John's once more confused.

Alex sketches out a gallant bow - there, right in the aides' office - and holds out his arm, as he would for a lady. "Come to bed with me, Laurens?"

And oh, of course! Alex is a genius. Frequently he thinks of solutions that no one else would, but in this case John can't believe he hadn't thought the very same thing, and resolves to blame the fact that he doesn't believe he's thinking at all.  They share a sleeping room, anyway, and often enough a bed.  They can do whatever they like in it, now that an understanding's been reached.

"Of course," he says. He can't stop grinning, but he's sure Alex doesn't mind.

Alex tidies up his papers, rough-edged stacks of ivory-colored sheets heavy with too many words, taking as much time as he always does. John rolls up the sketch he'd made and slips it into his pocket. Then Alex banks the fire, orange flames settling down into a darker vermilion glow, and takes his candle from the desk, and beckons him on, conspiratorial, and they steal down the hall. It's dank and cold as it is every night, but there's a sense of promise in the air that isn't just of water leaking on them through the roof once again.

They'll die soon enough, probably. The General will let them fight again soon. But this, he thinks, this could be worth living for, if they get the chance.

**Author's Note:**

> I am multsicorn on tumblr, if you wanna chat please say hi! <3


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